intellectuality of their features. It is a workhouse where aged
failures in the struggle for existence are permitted to pass away
in peace. Not here will we meet with degraded types of the European
inebriate or jailbird. They are all representative of one very
fascinating aspect of Judaism which it is the fashion to doubt or decry.
It is not only in India that the Yogi, or contemplative Sage, is to be
met with, who, having fulfilled his whole duty as a man, retires from
active life to meditate on the here and the hereafter. We have our
Jewish Yogis even outside the dazzling effulgence which emanates from
the Zohar. They work not, neither do they spin, but the world is better
for their being in it, even if not of it. It is refreshing to think
that not everybody is in a hurry, not everybody busy money-making or
money-spending, and that a few there are who are survivals of more
tranquil ages.
E. N. ADLER, 1895.
SHARING THE BURDEN
I
WHEN trouble comes upon the congregation, it is not right for a man to
say, ‘I will eat and drink, and things will be peaceful for me’. Moses,
our Teacher, always bore his share in the troubles of the congregation,
as it is written, ‘They took a stone and put it under him’ (Exodus 17.
12). Could they not have given him a chair or a cushion? But then he
said, ‘Since the Israelites are in trouble, lo, I will bear my part
with them, for he who bears his portion of the burden will live to
enjoy the hour of consolation’. Woe to one who thinks, ‘Ah, well, I
will neglect my duty. Who can know whether I bear my part or not?’
Even the stones of the house, ay, the limbs of the trees shall testify
against him, as it is written, ‘For the stones will cry from the wall,
and the limbs of the trees will testify’.
TALMUD.
II[10]
‘IT is high time’, wrote Leopold Zunz, in the days when the
emancipation of the Jews in Europe was being constantly postponed, or
was being dealt with in a huckstering and grudging spirit, ‘It is high
time that instead of having rights and liberties doled out to them,
they should obtain Right and Liberty.’ It was well said: ‘Right and
Liberty’ are one and indivisible, and belong to all men as such. Well,
‘Right and Liberty’ are ours, if any people on the face of the earth
can be said to possess them. Surely we owe something to the land and
the people where and among whom our lines are fallen, and of which
we are an integral part. We owe it to them to take our share of the
national burdens and in the national life, to seek our prosperity in
theirs, to respect the law and its representatives, from the humblest
officer of justice to the Sovereign upon the throne.
SIMEON SINGER, 1894.
THE DUTY OF SELF-RESPECT
NOTHING is more dangerous for a nation or for an individual than
to plead guilty to imaginary sins. Where the sin is real――by honest
endeavour the sinner can purify himself. But when a man has been
persuaded to suspect himself unjustly――what _can_ he do? Our greatest
need is emancipation from self-contempt, from this idea that we are
really worse than all the world. Otherwise we may in course of time
become in reality what we now imagine ourselves to be.
ACHAD HA’AM, 1891.
ANTI-SEMITISM
I
JEWISH misery has two forms, the material and the moral. In Eastern
Europe, in those regions which shelter the vast majority of our race,
we see a painful fight for the maintenance of a bare existence. In
Western Europe, the Jew has bread; but man does not live on bread alone.
His misery is moral. It exists in the constant wounding of self-respect
and honour.
MAX NORDAU, 1897.
* * * * *
I REMEMBER when I used to come home from the Cheder[11], bleeding and
crying from the wounds inflicted upon me by the Christian boys, my
father used to say, ‘My child, we are in Golus (exile), and we must
submit to God’s will’. And he made me understand that this is only
a passing stage in history, as we Jews belong to Eternity, when God
will comfort His people. Thus the pain was only physical; but my
real suffering began later in life, when I emigrated from Roumania to
so-called civilized countries, and found there what I might call the
Higher Anti-Semitism, which burns the soul though it leaves the body
unhurt.
S. SCHECHTER, 1903.
II
NOT rarely a Jew is heard to murmur that we must learn from our
enemies and try to remedy our failings. He forgets, however, that the
anti-Semitic accusations are valueless, because they are not based on
a criticism of real facts, but are merely due to the psychological law
according to which children, savages, and malevolent fools make persons
and things against which they have an aversion responsible for their
sufferings.
Pretexts change, but the hatred remains. The Jews are not hated because
they have evil qualities; evil qualities are sought for in them because
they are hated.
MAX NORDAU.
* * * * *
MY grandmother, the beautiful daughter of a family who had suffered
much from persecution, had imbibed that dislike for her race which
the vain are too apt to adopt when they find they are born to public
contempt. The indignant feeling that should be reserved for the
persecutor, in the mortification of their disturbed sensibility,
is too often visited on the victim; and the cause of annoyance is
recognized not in the ignorant malevolence of the powerful, but in the
conscientious conviction of the innocent sufferer.
BENJAMIN DISRAELI, 1848.
III
ANTI-SEMITES accuse the Jewish people of an incapacity for forgiveness
and love. Let these preachers of love first practise it. Let them
refrain, at least, from incendiary slanders against Israel who, among
all the peoples of the world, has agonized and suffered most from
hatred, malice, and all uncharitableness at the hands of others. Let
such preachers of love remember the Mosaic Law: ‘Thou shalt not bear
false witness against thy neighbour’.
J. H. HERTZ, 1919.
* * * * *
NOT one man alone has risen up against us to destroy us, but in every
generation there rise up against us those who seek to destroy us; but
the Holy One, blessed be He, delivers us from their hands.
PASSOVER HAGADAH.
* * * * *
NO weapon that is formed against thee shall prosper; and every tongue
that shall rise against thee in judgement thou shalt condemn.
ISAIAH 54. 17.
THE JEW AS A PATRIOT
EVERY student of the Hebrew language is aware that we have in the
conjugation of its verbs a mood known as the Intensive (Piel) Voice,
which by means of an almost imperceptible modification of vowel points
intensifies the meaning of the primitive root. A similar significance
seems to attach to the Jews themselves in connexion with the people
among whom they dwell. They are the _intensive form_ of any nationality
whose language and customs they adopt.
EMMA LAZARUS, 1882.
* * * * *
LOYALTY to the flag for which the sun once stood still, can only deepen
our devotion to the flag on which the sun never sets.
Col. A. E. GOLDSMID, 1902.
THE JEWISH SOLDIER
MOTHER England, Mother England, ’mid the thousands
Far beyond the sea to-day,
Doing battle for thy honour, for thy glory,
Is there place for us, a little band of brothers?
England, say!
Long ago and far away, O Mother England,
We were warriors brave and bold;
But a hundred nations rose in arms against us,
And the shades of exile closed o’er those heroic
Days of old.
Thou hast given us home and freedom, Mother England,
Thou hast let us live again,
Free and fearless, ’midst thy free and fearless children,
Sharing with them, as one people, grief and gladness,
Joy and pain.
For the Jew has heart and hand, our Mother England,
And they both are thine to-day――
Thine for life and thine for death――yea, thine for ever!
Wilt thou take them as we give them, freely, gladly?
England, say!
ALICE LUCAS, 1899.
THE JEW’S LOVE OF BRITAIN[12]
IS it a matter of surprise that so goodly a number of our
brethren offered themselves willingly among the people? One of the
masterpieces of eloquence bequeathed to us by classic antiquity is the
funeral oration delivered by Pericles on those who had fallen in the
Peloponnesian War. He dilates upon the sources of Athens’ greatness.
He portrays in glowing colours how justice is there equally meted out
to all citizens, from the highest to the lowest, how all are under the
aegis of freedom, and all equally inspired by obedience to law. And he
continues: ‘Such a country well deserves that her children should die
for her!’ The members of the House of Israel have always faithfully
served the country of their birth or their adoption. But surely England
deserves that we, her Jewish children, should gladly live and die for
her: since here, as in no other country, the teachings of Holy Writ are
venerated and obeyed. Here, as in no other Empire in the world, there
breathes a passionate love of freedom, a burning hatred of tyrant wrong.
HERMANN ADLER, _at the unveiling of the
Memorial to the Jewish soldiers who fell
in the South African War_, 1905.
TO ENGLAND
LINES OF A RUSSIAN JEW
IN childhood I learned to love thee,
Thy name was a legend to me;
I dreamt of a distant great island,
Where men may be strong, yet be free.
And I, who the clatter of fetters
Have heard in my childhood and youth,
Do bless thee for giving me refuge,
And faith in the triumph of truth.
Thou art not my stepmother, England,
My sister of mercy thou art;
For thee in the hour of thy trial
A brotherly love fills my heart.
P. M. RASKIN, 1914.
JUDAISM AND THE JEW IN AMERICA
I
LIKE the river that takes its rise in the distant hills, gradually
courses its way through the country, passing alike through sublime
landscape and hideous morass, offering its banks for the foundation
of great cities, its waters enriched and modified by the tributaries
that gradually flow towards it, until it at last loses itself in the
ocean: so Judaism, taking its rise among the mountains of Sinai, slowly
and steadily has advanced; passing alternately through a golden age of
toleration and an iron age of persecution, giving its moral code for
the foundation of many a government; modified by the customs and modes
of life of each nation through which it has passed, chastened and
enriched by centuries of experience――shall I say, as I said with the
river, that it, too, at last loses itself in the great sea of humanity?
No! rather like the Gulf Stream, which, passing through the vast
Atlantic Ocean, part of it, and yet distinct from it, never losing
its individuality, but always detected by its deeper colour and warmer
temperature, until it eventually modifies the severe climate of a
distant country: so Judaism, passing through all the nations of the old
world, part of them, and yet distinct from them, ever recognized by its
depth and intensity, has at last reached this new world without having
lost its individuality. And here it is still able, by the loftiness
of its ethical truth and by the purity of its principles, to give
intellectual and moral stamina to a never-ending future humanity.
M. H. HARRIS, 1887.
II
WE, more than any other nation on the globe, recall the happy day when
the light of promise first dawned in a modern Canaan, overflowing with
the milk and honey of humane kindness, in a land symbolized by the
torch of the goddess of liberty, whose soft, mild, yet penetrating rays
are reflected o’er all the scattered sons of much-tried Israel, whom
she so benignantly beckons to these shores.
ALEXANDER KOHUT, _on the 400th Anniversary
of the Discovery of America_, 1892.
THE DELUGE OF FIRE
(1914‒1918)
MANKIND craves the conviction that the agony and tears and suffering
of these hundreds of millions of belligerents, constituting the vast
majority of the human race, are not in vain; that somehow good will
come of all this infinite woe.
In old Jewish books there is a wondrous legend of a second Deluge,
a Deluge of Fire, that would sweep over the earth. In anticipation of
it, the children of men were bidden to write the story of man on tables
of clay, as such tables would not only escape destruction, but would
become the more enduring. We to-day are the eyewitnesses of such a
fire-deluge dreamt of by the ancients. Let us not, however, fear that
civilization and religion will perish from the earth. Quite other
will be its far-reaching results for mankind. Right and humanity will
emerge stronger than ever from this world-conflagration. Before this
war we saw that the laws of God and man were written as it were on
mere tables of clay, breakable and effaceable at will. This very
world-conflagration, however, will yet render the Law of Nations
indestructible and for ever unassailable by insolence or power. The
behests of humanity, which so far have been but pious wishes, will be
converted into regulative principles in international dealings.
J. H. HERTZ, _to a congregation of Jewish
soldiers at the Front, France_, 1915.
THE HEALING OF THE NATIONS
THE sun and the moon are become black,
And the stars withdraw their shining ...
And the heavens and the earth shall shake;
But the Lord will be a refuge unto His people.
JOEL 4. 15, 16.
* * * * *
AND the loftiness of man shall be bowed down,
And the haughtiness of men shall be brought low;
And the Lord alone shall be exalted in that day.
And the idols shall utterly pass away.
ISAIAH 2. 17, 18.
* * * * *
AND, behold, the Lord passed by, and a great and strong wind rent the
mountains, and broke in pieces the rocks before the Lord; but the Lord
was not in the wind; and after the wind an earthquake; but the Lord was
not in the earthquake; and after the earthquake a fire; but the Lord
was not in the fire; and after the fire a still small voice.
1 KINGS 19. 11, 12.
* * * * *
HEAL us, O Lord, and we shall be healed; save us, and we shall be
saved; for Thou art our praise. Vouchsafe a perfect healing unto
all our wounds; for Thou, almighty King, art a faithful and merciful
Physician.
DAILY PRAYER BOOK.
THE MESSIANIC HOPE
WHEN the harp of Judah sounded, thrilled with the touch of inspiration
Divine, among the echoes it waked in the human heart were those
sweet sounds whose witcheries transport the soul into the realms of
happiness. That melody has been our source of courage, our solace and
our strength, and in all our wanderings we have sung it. It is the
music of the Messianic age, the triumph-hymn to be one day thundered
by all humanity, the real psalm of life as mankind shall sing it when
Israel’s world-task of teaching it shall have been accomplished. Its
harmony is the harmony of the families of the earth, at last at peace,
at last united in brotherhood, at last happy in their return to the One
Great Father.
H. PEREIRA MENDES, 1887.
* * * * *
HAVE we not all one father?
Hath not one God created us?
Why do we deal treacherously every man
against his brother,
Profaning the covenant of our fathers?
MALACHI 2. 10.
THE VISION OF A UNITED HUMANITY
AND it shall come to pass in the end of days,
That the mountain of the Lord’s house shall be
established as the top of the mountains,
And shall be exalted above the hills;
And all nations shall flow unto it,
And many peoples shall go and say:
‘Come ye, and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord,
To the house of the God of Jacob;
And He will teach us of His ways;
And we will walk in His paths.’
For out of Zion shall go forth the law,
And the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.
And He shall judge between the nations,
And shall decide for many peoples;
And they shall beat their swords into ploughshares,
And their spears into pruning-hooks;
Nation shall not lift up sword against nation,
Neither shall they learn war any more.
ISAIAH 2. 2‒4.
* * * * *
THE Jew who is true to himself will labour with especial energy in
the cause of peace. His religion, his history, his mission, all pledge
him to a policy of peace, as a citizen as well as an individual. The
war-loving Jew is a contradiction in terms. The ‘Man of Sorrows’ must
beware of helping, however remotely, to heap sorrow upon others.
MORRIS JOSEPH, 1903.
TRUST YE IN THE LORD FOR EVER
THOU wilt keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on
Thee; because he trusted in Thee.
Trust ye in the Lord for ever, for the Lord is God, an
everlasting Rock.
The way of the just is straight: Thou, Most Upright, makest
plain the path of the just.
Yea, in the way of Thy judgements, O Lord, have we waited for
Thee; to Thy name and to Thy memorial is the desire of
our soul.
With my soul have I desired Thee in the night;
Yea, with my spirit within me will I seek Thee early: for
when Thy judgements are in the earth, the inhabitants of
the world learn righteousness.
Let favour be showed to the wicked, yet will he not learn
righteousness: in the land of uprightness will he deal
wrongfully and will not behold the majesty of the Lord.
Lord, Thy hand is lifted up, yet they see not: but they shall
see Thy zeal for the people, and be ashamed; yea, the
fire of Thine adversaries shall devour them.
Lord, Thou wilt ordain peace for us: for Thou hast also
wrought all our works for us.
ISAIAH 26. 3, 4, 7‒12.
II
THE PEOPLE OF THE BOOK
_NOW the Lord said unto Abram: ‘... I will make of thee a great nation,
and I will bless thee, and make thy name great; and be thou a blessing:
And I will bless them that bless thee, and him that curseth thee will
I curse; and in thee shall all the families of the earth be blessed.’_
GENESIS 12. 1‒3.
_THUS saith God the Lord ... I the Lord have called thee in
righteousness and have taken hold of thine hand, and kept thee, and
set thee for a covenant of the people, for a light of the nations; to
open the blind eyes, to bring out the prisoners from the dungeon, and
them that sit in darkness out of the prison house._
ISAIAH 42. 5‒7.
ISRAEL IMMORTAL
THUS saith the Lord, Who giveth the sun for a light by day, and the
ordinances of the moon and of the stars for a light by night, Who
stirreth up the sea, that the waves thereof roar; the Lord of hosts
is His name: If these ordinances depart from before Me, saith the Lord,
then the seed of Israel also shall cease from being a nation before Me
for ever.
JEREMIAH 31. 35, 36.
* * * * *
THE sun and moon for ever shine――by day
And night they mark the Eternal’s high design.
Changeless and tireless, speeding on their way,
The sun and moon for ever shine.
Symbols are they of Israel’s chosen line,
A nation still, though countless foes combine;
Smitten by God and healed by God are they:
They shall not fear, safe ’neath the Rock divine,
Nor cease to be, until men cease to say,
The sun and moon for ever shine.
YEHUDAH HALEVI, 1150.
(_Trans. Alice Lucas._)
* * * * *
THE life of man is numbered by days,
The days of Israel are innumerable.
ECCLESIASTICUS 37. 25.
* * * * *
KINGDOMS arise and kingdoms pass away, but Israel endureth for evermore.
MIDRASH.
THE ETERNAL RIDDLE[13]
ISRAEL, my people,
God’s greatest riddle,
Will thy solution
Ever be told?
Fought――never conquered,
Bent――never broken,
Mortal――immortal,
Youthful, though old.
Egypt enslaved thee,
Babylon crushed thee,
Rome led thee captive,
Homeless thy head.
Where are those nations
Mighty and fearsome?
Thou hast survived them,
They are long dead.
Nations keep coming,
Nations keep going,
Passing like shadows,
Wiped off the earth.
Thou an eternal
Witness remainest,
Watching their burial,
Watching their birth.
Pray, who revealed thee
Heavens great secret:
Death and destruction
Thus to defy?
Suffering torture,
Stake, inquisition――
Prithee, who taught thee
Never to die?
Ay, and who gave thee
Faith, deep as ocean,
Strong as the rock-hills,
Fierce as the sun?
Hated and hunted,
Ever thou wand’rest,
Bearing a message:
God is but one!
Pray, has thy saga
Likewise an ending,
As its beginning
Glorious of old?
Israel, my people,
God’s greatest riddle,
Will thy solution
Ever be told?
P. M. RASKIN, 1914.
THE SECRET OF ISRAEL’S IMMORTALITY[14]
WHAT has prevented this constantly migrating people, this veritable
Wandering Jew, from degenerating into brutalized vagabonds, into
vagrant hordes of gipsies? The answer is at hand. In its journey
through the desert of life, for eighteen centuries, the Jewish people
carried along the Ark of the Covenant, which breathed into its heart
ideal aspirations, and even illumined the badge of disgrace affixed
to its garment with an apostolic glory. The proscribed, outlawed,
universally persecuted Jew felt a sublime, noble pride in being
singled out to perpetuate and to suffer for a religion which reflects
eternity, by which the nations of the earth were gradually educated
to a knowledge of God and morality, and from which is to spring the
salvation and redemption of the world.
Such a people, which disdains its present but has the eye steadily
fixed on its future, which lives as it were on hope, is on that very
account eternal, like hope.
H. GRAETZ, 1853.
THE BOOK OF BOOKS
THE Bible, what a book! Large and wide as the world, based on
the abysses of creation, and towering aloft into the blue secrets
of heaven. Sunrise and sunset, promise and fulfilment, birth and
death――the whole drama of humanity――are contained in this one book. It
is the Book of Books. The Jews may readily be consoled at the loss of
Jerusalem, and the Temple, and the Ark of the Covenant, and all the
crown jewels of King Solomon. Such forfeiture is as naught when weighed
against the Bible, the imperishable treasure that they have saved. If I
do not err, it was Mahomet who named the Jews the ‘People of the Book’,
a name which in Eastern countries has remained theirs to the present
day, and is deeply significant. That one book is to the Jews their
country. Within the well-fenced boundaries of that book they live and
have their being; they enjoy their inalienable citizenship, are strong
to admiration; thence none can dislodge them. Absorbed in the perusal
of their sacred book they little heeded the changes that were wrought
in the real world around them. Nations rose and vanished, States
flourished and decayed, revolutions raged throughout the earth――but
they, the Jews, sat poring over this book, unconscious of the wild
chase of time that rushed on above their heads.
H. HEINE, 1830.
THE BIBLE[15]
AS to an ancient temple
Whose vast proportions tower
With summit inaccessible
Among the stars of heaven;
While the resistless ocean
Of peoples and of cities
Breaks at its feet in foam,
Work that a hundred ages
Hallow: I bow to thee.
From out thy mighty bosom
Rise hymns sublime, and melodies
Like to the heavens singing
Praises to their Creator;
While at the sound, an ecstasy,
A trance, fills all my being
With terror and with awe――
I feel my proud heart thrilling
With throbs of holy pride.
Oh! come, thou high beneficent
Heritage of my fathers;
Our country, altar, prophet,
Our life, our all, art thou!
In doubt, in woe, in outrage,
In pangs of dissolution
That wring our tortured hearts,
Come, ope the rosy portals
Of Hope to us once more.
Ah me! what countless miseries,
What tears all unregarded.
Hast thou consoled and softened
With gentle voice and holy!
How many hearts that struggle
With doubt, remorse, anxiety,
With all the woes of ages,
Dost thou, on ample pinions,
Lift purified to Heaven!
Listen! the world is rising,
Seeking, unquiet, thrilling,
Awakens the new century
To new hopes and new visions.
Men hear upon the mountains
Strange and life-giving voices;
Every soul seems to wait,
And from that Book the signal
For the new day shall come.
DAVID LEVI, 1846.
(_Trans. Mary A. Craig._)
* * * * *
FROM century to century, even unto this day, through the fairest
regions of civilization, the Bible dominates existence. Its vision of
life moulds states and societies. Its Psalms are more popular in every
country than the poems of the nation’s own poets. Beside this one book
with its infinite editions ... all other literatures seem ‘trifles
light as air’.
ISRAEL ZANGWILL, 1895.
A JEWISH VERSION OF THE BIBLE
I
OUR great claim to the gratitude of mankind is that we gave to the
world the word of God, the Bible. We have stormed heaven to snatch down
this heavenly gift, as the Paitan[16] puts it. We threw ourselves into
the breach, and covered it with our bodies against every attack. We
allowed ourselves to be slain in hundreds and thousands rather than
become unfaithful to it, and we bore witness to its truth, and watched
over its purity, in the face of a hostile world. The Bible is our sole
_raison d’être_; and it is just this which the Higher Anti-Semitism,
both within and without our ranks, is seeking to destroy, denying all
our claims for the past and leaving us without hope for the future.
This intellectual persecution can only be fought with intellectual
weapons, and unless we make an effort to recover our Bible we are
irrevocably lost from both worlds.
S. SCHECHTER, 1903.
II